BREAKING: Another fine BREAKING NEWS discussion!

Under terms of current Hard Pundit Law, every weeknight evening must involve some type of BREAKING NEWS. Last night, this was it:

CUOMO (7/26/18): We have a Cuomo Prime Time exclusive tonight...

We have CNN political analyst Carl Bernstein and Jim Sciutto, our chief national security correspondent for CNN. Jimmy, what do we know now?

SCIUTTO: Well, Chris, tonight, sources with knowledge tell myself and Carl that Michael Cohen claims that then-candidate Donald Trump knew in advance about the June 26 meeting in Trump Tower in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton. Crucially, these sources tell us that Cohen is willing to make that assertion to the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

Cohen alleges as well that he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians' offer. He was informed by Donald Trump Jr. about that offer. By Cohen's account, Trump approved going ahead with that meeting with the Russians.

Now, we should note that our sources said Cohen does not have evidence such as audio recordings to corroborate his claim. A source familiar with Cohen's House testimony said he did not testify that Trump had advance knowledge. Cohen's claims were not mentioned as well in separate reports issued by both Republicans and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.

There it was! "Sources with knowledge" had told CNN what Michael Cohen was saying. Cohen was saying that he had bad campaign dirt on Herr Trump.

"Crucially," Cohen was saying that he was willing to make his assertions to Robert Mueller! Also, the sources said that Cohen doesn't have audio recordings to corroborate his claims.

That went on the air at 9 PM Eastern. Needless to say, the usual happened.

A little more than two hours later, at 11:07 PM, Brian Williams was talking turkey to a pundit guest, Robert Costa. Brian floated a question to Bob. But did his question make sense?

WILLIAMS (7/26/18): Let's talk turkey here, and that is, a lot of reporters are both pushing and chasing down a narrative that—

Here is news that Cohen can put Donald Trump in possession of knowledge about that meeting. The narrative is that the Trump camp leaked the story because it's bad to own it in advance. What it also does, it diminishes the value of Mr. Cohen as a potential "flip" target for the feds, the Southern District of New York. Can you speak to that possible strategy?

Let's be fair to Brian! By 11 o'clock, there was a widespread pundit narrative according to which the Trump camp had been the source for the evening's exciting report.

Many reporters really were floating that exciting idea. But did Brian's question make sense?

Did Brian's question make sense? How could the Trump camp have been the source of the evening's report?

The report concerned what Michael Cohen wanted to say to Mueller; it concerned what sort of evidence Cohen had. Who in the orbit of Donald J. Trump could have been a credible source for a report like that?

The "narrative" to which Williams referred didn't much seem to make sense. That said, at thrilling moments like these, the excitable children of Cable News County rarely feel obliged to make sense.

When breaking news has started to break, the emphasis is on excitement and storyline. The children were very excited last night as they suggested the Trump folk did it. As usual, they didn't seem bothered by the fact that the claim didn't seem to make sense.

In fairness, Williams wasn't kidding as he "talked turkey" with Costa. At 10 PM, the always excited Lawrence O'Donnell had opened his program with his mandated chat with Rachel Maddow. Along the way, Lawrence said this:

LAWRENCE (7/26/18): And Rachel, with every one of these stories that comes out and breaks very dramatically, as they have for us for several months, there is always that very strange part of it which is, Why is this happening?

RACHEL: Yes.

LAWRENCE: Why is this becoming public? Who has an incentive anywhere in this story, from Michael Cohen to the president's side, to make this public, and I can never figure it out. I never get a satisfactory answer to why did this happen? Why did this get revealed?

Lawrence can never figure it out! He also didn't seem to see that one of his speculations this night didn't much seem to make sense.

Who within the Trump campaign could have spoken to Sciutto and Bernstein and served as a source for what Cohen wanted to do? The notion didn't seem to make sense. But Williams was right on one point:

By the time he got on the air, it truly had become a "narrative." The speculation was widely bruited, with no one seeming to see that it didn't much seem to make sense.

The children tend to be less than super-sharp even when they're at their best. On evenings like last night, they get dragged out to speculate about BREAKING NEWS without any possible prep.

They turned to a favorite speculation; someone in the Trump camp had been the source of the BREAKING NEWS. It didn't seem to make much sense, but it gave them something to wonder about, and it cast the Trump camp in a slippery light.

This is the sort of thing the children of cable news love. All major news topics got shoved aside last night so this pleasing pseudo-discussion could burn up entire hours.

Kids at the border? Who cares? Rachel got to the topic at 9:55, saying she was "desperate" to discuss it. She did so for three minutes.

Long ago, our species triumphed through mastery of gossip and belief in group fictions. So says Professor Harari. We suspect that the gent could be right.

34 comments:

Cohen may be embellishing his recollection under pressure from the Prosecutors. But, assuming Cohen is now telling the truth, I don't see this as any kind of scandal. Naturally a candidate would be happy to let someone on his/her campaign go listen to someone who claim to have dirt on her/his opponent.

Jonny -- Are you kidding? Trump lies all the time about everything. If he told one more lie about knowing in advance about some meeting (a meeting that went nowhere), that's just normal behavior, isn't it?

BTW I now see that Trump has denied knowing about the meeting in advance, so it's a he-said-he-said matter. IMHO only people who already hate Trump will see this as a scandal.

Caesar -- thanks for the links. Josh Marshall argues intelligently and persuasively. I would hate to oppose him in a debating contest. If it were a year and a half ago, Marshall would have made a good case for appointing a special prosecutor.

But, Mueller and his team have been investigating for a year and a half. They have produced no indictments of collusion by Trump nor by his campaign team. Nor have they made public any such evidence. IMHO if the evidence existed, they would have found it by now. Marshall's analysis is not enough to outweigh the negative results from the special prosecutor.

Well, there was a story out that Mueller was looking at Trump's tweets for evidence of collusion.

We do frequently see defenses of the investigation prmising that Mueller has stuff about hot and cold running Russians at Trump Tower and whenever you turned on the lights in Trump's kitchen, Russians scattered into the woodwork.

I suspect we'll see some stuff around the midterms. I suspect all hell will break loose around then.

No way we'll see anything much announced by Mueller after September through to the midterms. Comey was recently publicly rebuked about his actions in 2016 by an Inspector General report.

[QUOTE]...[T]he Department and the FBI have long observed a norm against taking an action during the run-up to an election that could impact an election. Although there is no codified “60-day rule,” Comey acknowledged that he has consistently adhered to this “take no action” norm in the past: “I’ve lived my entire career in the Department of Justice under the norm, the principle, that we, if at all possible, avoid taking any action in the run up to an election, avoid taking any action that could have some impact, even if unknown, on an election whether that’s a dogcatcher election or President of the United States.”

Given the lack of a written policy, we recommend that the Department consider providing guidance to agents and prosecutors concerning the taking of overt investigative steps, indictments, public announcements, or other actions that could impact an election.

These policies and norms formed the fundamental backdrop for Comey’s decision on October 28. Because of them, Comey’s description of his choice as being between “two doors,” one labeled “speak” and one labeled “conceal,” was a false dichotomy.

The two doors were actually labeled “follow policy/practice” and “depart from policy/practice.” His task was not to conduct an ad hoc comparison of case-specific outcomes and risks. Rather, the burden was on him to justify an extraordinary departure from these established norms, policies, and precedent.[END QUOTE]

Trump is not running during the midterms. There is nothing that says the Mueller investigation cannot release findings during the midterms because Republicans are running. It is too distant a connection to say that because some of the people under investigation are Republicans (even though not elected), it might affect Republicans running for election elsewhere. This is being characterized as a Trump scandal, not a generic Republican scandal (even though some liberals might see it that way). Trump isn't running and neither is anyone being investigated.

It’s as specious to suggest that Republicans can’t be hurt during the mid-terms by bad news for Trump as it is to suggest that Mueller findings have to formally announced before the public can be informed of them.

"On July 6, WikiLeaks messaged the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account again, trying to close the deal: 'If you have anything Hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify Bernie supporters behind her after.'

The Unit 74455 team responded: 'ok ... I see.'

Whoever was using the WikiLeaks Twitter account soon expanded on the urgency of the request. 'We think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against Hillary ... so conflict between Bernie and Hillary is interesting.'

On July 14, 2016, the GRU team finally sent an email to WikiLeaks with the attachment 'wk dnc link1.txt.gpg'—a PGP-encrypted file with instructions on how to get to archives of the stolen DNC documents. 'The Conspirators explained to [WikiLeaks] that the encrypted file contained instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents,' the indictment states. A day later, someone from WikiLeaks replied that they had downloaded 'the 1Gb or so archive' and would push out a release of the documents within the week.

WikiLeaks released the DNC emails and files on July 22, just three days before the Democratic National Convention. They declined to say where the cache came from. Then, in the month before the election, WikiLeaks released the stolen emails of John Podesta. 'Between on or about October 7, 2016 and November 7, 2016, Organization 1 released approximately thirty-three tranches of documents that had been stolen from the chairman of the Clinton Campaign,' Mueller said in the indictment. 'In total, over 50,000 stolen documents were released.'"

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It must have been Somerby's concern for those kids that prevented him from seeing this statement from Lanny Davis, Cohen's lawyer, responding to the Cohen/Trump Tower news, presented during Maddow's show:

“I cannot comment. And I have to wonder why the Trump people would put that out. It was not from us.”

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